James Alexander
James Alexander, EdD
James "Alex" Alexander has a doctorate in Human Resource Development, and after a dozen years in corporate life has spent more than two decades helping product companies build brilliant services businesses. Alex researches, publishes, advises, trains, and speaks on transforming good services organizations into high-performance services machines that create loyal customers, drive sales of services and products, and dominate the competition. He has written five research studies, four books, and over 150 articles, and has spoken, consulted, and trained in 25 countries.
Seriously Selling Services: The 5 Best Practices
It takes Kevlar vests and iron underwear to sell services in a product company—learn the five vital keys to leading this transition. Managing the transition...
Occasional Brilliance: Good Enough Is Usually Good Enough
Under-promise and over-deliver has a ring to it. Knock-your-socks-off service is a catchy phrase. Flawless consulting has an emotional appeal. What services organization can...
Transitioning Your Services Business from Free to Fee
This article is for executives and services leaders in organizations that have given away services to customers in the past and now want to...
For Queen and Country: Reducing Services Giveaways
During the heyday of the British Empire, many a naval blockade or military campaign was launched under the watchword of “For Queen and Country.”...
Seriously Selling to the C-Suite
Only attempt C-level selling when you have competent, credible people armed with unique, value-creating information. Otherwise, stay home. The buyers of services and complex solutions...
Everybody Sells Services
Relying entirely on the product sales force to drive services is not a good idea. Involving your frontline services pros can kickstart seriously selling...
Brilliant Strategy: 4 Paths to Greatness – Part 2
No matter how talented your organization is, if you don’t have the right strategy, you’ll always suffer spotty customer satisfaction, fight problems with morale,...
Brilliant Strategy: 4 Paths to Greatness – Part 1
No matter how talented your organization is, if you don’t have the right strategy, you’ll always suffer spotty customer satisfaction, fight problems with morale,...
Services Pro 3.0: The New Corporate Rock Star
Once upon a time...suppliers worshipped their products above all else. Every day...sellers pushed their boxes and gave away services to get the deal. One day...the…
Services and Strategy: Why Sell Services?
Leading field services in a product company is not for the weak of heart. You must deal with executives who feel that products are...
Seriously Selling Success: The Evolution of Influence
Is your win rate slower and lower? Is your profitability slipping and dipping? Like an old bull limping through the pasture, it could be that...
Moron Management: Is Your Boss a Dolt?
Really good leaders are tough to find—type in “leadership” on Amazon’s website and 195,206 books pop up. Obviously, with all that written (and more...
Brilliant Time Management Practice: Just Say No
The natural tendency of anyone brought up in the services industry is to say yes. Yes, to helping a customer out with something “just...
Brilliant CS: Pitfalls on the Path to Performance
Most of us are addicted to best practices as guidelines as to how to best turn the crank on the customer success engine. I...
Customer Success: The Lost Opportunity
Like driving a high-performance powerboat at idle speed, many organizations only creep along when it comes to piloting customer success—limiting speed, minimizing power, and...
Brilliant Leadership: The Need for Speed
“Looking back over my career, I have never made a tough change that I haven’t wished I had made a year or so earlier.”...
Brilliant CX Tool: Harnessing Hassle
How easy is your company to do business with? Super easy? Crazy hard? Here is a simple, yet powerful tool to find the answer, The…
You Know You Have Trust When…
Indicators of High Trust So how do you know you have achieved high levels of customer trust? What are the indicators? Here are three: 1.…
Brilliant Customer Success: Categorize to Prioritize
It is nice to proclaim that you are dedicated to delivering customer success to all customers. However, if your resources are limited (aren’t they...
Brilliant Influencing: Customer Success
How do your customers really define success? As good corporate citizens, I’ll wager they want to help their organizations address its critical issues, be they...